


Be Okay

by Claus_Lucas



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Child Abuse, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Established Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claus_Lucas/pseuds/Claus_Lucas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When blood and thunder roars in her face, Severa grips her beloved’s hand tighter and whispers, “Oh, my dear, do not fear, for I have vanquished the monster already.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Okay

**Author's Note:**

> [cease to know or to tell or to see or to be your own, have someone else's will as your own](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UiAQmfay8U%22%22)

There are tomes of advanced elemental magic littered across the floor. Severa can identify their contents by the elaborate symbols adorning their covers and pages. A glass bottle, recently knocked over, is pouring ink onto a certain title. Mud marks form the silhouette of one big labyrinth.

Severa follows the trail of impatience and frustration to the figure of Noire. Hunched over and visibly trembling, Noire appears to be studying a stack of books, one of them currently held up by her lap while her fingers flip through the pages in search of something. Once she asserts that it does not withhold what she seeks, she throws it over her shoulder, signaling her rage with a scream.

As she moves onto the next, repeating the process, Noire mutters under her agitated breath, “Opening minds… how to interpret dreams… transmute your anger… make the source of your power… and for the pyre…”

Noire must be looking for a rare spell.

“A hex of this level can only be transferred, not disbanded, and it will only expire along with a host!”

The latest volume seems to have offended her with its misinformation. Noire hoists it into the air and flings it at the wall, the strength of her arm causing its spine to break apart.

Severa frowns, dread creeping into her bones until it’s settled, snug and comfortable, in her marrow. She takes a couple of steps forward, tentatively, conflicted between making her presence known immediately and waiting until she’s closer to Noire. The mercenary fails to mask her presence, however, and Noire reels around to face her, eyes squinted and a scowl on her lips.

“What do you want!” Noire demands. Her glare is vicious, the lightning to match the clap of thunder of her voice.

Severa is articulating a question when Noire decides to answer it before it’s asked.

“I have a quest to fulfill! Terrible monsters have appeared in my dreams! They must be slayed by my hand if the land is to be freed! So if you don’t mind!” Noire exclaims, returning to her books.

In a softer tone, she mumbles, “I’m not trained in the magical arts, but I have history, it’s in my blood, my parents both, skilled mages whose power I must harness, even if it puts me in danger…”

All at once, Severa notices Noire’s bleeding knuckles, the gray streaks beneath her eyes, twin marks around her neck that look like they might be a few shades darker than the rest of her skin.

“Oh, darling,” says Severa, “I thought we had vanquished the monster.”

They haven’t seen or heard of Tharja in four years. 

* * *

Noire’s face is bright with tears. Her body wobbles –torso bent forward, toes orientated in opposite directions, her balance is drunk on vertigo. She’d collapse if it weren’t for Severa holding both of her wrists and offering her collarbone as a pillar to rest her head on. Noir inhales through tubes clogged with phlegm, her voice a scratched record whose original song has distorted into mostly static yet still clings to repeating its last coherent verses.

“I have to!” Noire splutters, struggling with bravery. She can feel her heart pounding in her throat, violent and sick like a poison demanding to be thrown up. “I have to! For myself, for everyone, and especially for you!”

Severa contemplates her partner with a polished serenity. Her thoughts are fractured by heartache but her smile and gaze are saccharine, as if saying, “All will be well.” Years of breaking down alongside Noire and trying to advert an inability to help Noire have taught Severa that in such perilous situations only by embodying strength can she protect Noire from shattering.

Severa’s fingers spread to Noire’s palms, seeking the niches that divide her hands to intertwine their fists. Severa grips Noire tightly, desperate to conceal its desperateness, the greatest terror in her life always being that of losing what is irrevocable.

“Have to what, Noire? Tell me exactly what you have to do,” says Severa but her voice is a murmur and Noire starts shouting midway through it, muting what remains.

“I have to be stronger!” Noire shouts, and then, interrupting her gasps, sobs, moans: “Stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger…”

The crown of her head is hitting Severa’s shoulder, weak, exhausted, with a sense of defeat, but rhythmically, like a habit, like a charm. Memories of holding Noire back and wrestling her to the ground so she can’t draw blood from her scalp by bashing her head into the wall resurface and it takes every moment of experience to stop Severa from trembling as well.

She guides Noire’s palms together so she can hold them with a single grip, then uses the unoccupied hand to caress her girlfriend’s face. Severa lifts Noire’s chin, pushing her head away just enough for their eyes to be in range of meeting.

But Noire’s eyelids have lowered and she’s sucked in her breath, holding it hostage in her lungs as if it were her last line of defense against an ongoing assault. Her grimace suggests that the odds are not in her favor. Altogether it indicates that Noire is battling the toughest of foes to vanquish: those that are immense and intimate and invisible.

“Noire,” whispers Severa.

The archer does not heed. Instead, she chants.

“I have to be stronger. I have to be normal. I have to be healthy. I can’t inconvenience others.”

Stooping down, Severa leans towards Noire to kiss the corners of her eyes, first right, then left. Pearls of tears melt into her lips, trickle onto her tongue and make it tingle. Noire’s eyelids flutter open. She tries to speak but it’s overridden by blubbering. Her moans are a gentle retching, echoes of the bruises branded into her everyday living.

“Noire,” says Severa. The word starts off strong but crumbles into a cliff side as it concludes. Uncertainty rocks her concentration until she blunders into hesitation.

Severa has sensed a chance to help dress Noire’s wounds, but she fears pressing too hard and accidentally pulling apart an important stitch. Growth requires suffering, Severa knows, _damn_ she knows, but Noire is already a trampled flower –there’s a limit to how much of her phobias she can face.

 _A lesson in acceptance_ , Severa reminds herself, _it’s the most important kind._

Severa looks straight into Noire and says, “You will never be normal. You will never be completely healthy. You’re sick. And that’s fine.”

Wisdom can not be learned in a day. A child’s heart is ruptured in a day but it heals slowly, stubbornly, through adolescence and adulthood, the whole of life. There is always healing to be done.

Every start is a good start, and they pile up.

“But I’m broken,” Noire whimpers.

Severa weaves a sigh out of compassion and fatigue.

“We’re all broken, Noire,” she professes. “The war… just started for you earlier.” 

* * *

There are blankets of thick wool laid across the ground. The landscape of space adorns the sky now that the sun’s blotting radiance has retreated to other corners of the world. Severa watches Noire’s face while the archer gazes upward. Their hands are clasped together. Their shoulders are touching.

“She used to tie me to the bed. I’d wake up restrained, unable to free myself,” Noire is saying. “If I raised my voice against her, no matter what she’d done, she’d act like she was the victim. She’d threaten to kill herself. It was so scary to listen to that I actually begged her not to. I promised to do as she asked.”

“Sleeping on the ground isn’t so bad,” says Severa. “It could be worse. I could be without you.”

Noire doesn’t react, at least not visibly. She’s relieved, yes, but Severa’s words can not comfort her. She has just scrambled out of dangerous territory, narrowly escaping an act of self-sabotage (her entire life feels like an act of self-sabotage, at least the self that is injured). She appears better but she has only calmed down, halted the gears from turning for a little while longer.

Of course it helps not being alone, but love can’t heal the past. Instead, it builds a future where the past does not have to repeat except in her dreams and deliriums.

Noire is okay, not the happy sort of okay but the at-least-I’m-not-breaking-down okay. That is a good okay to be for someone like Noire. At-least-I’m-not-breaking-down okay is the best some people can hope to feel most of the time, and that’s fine.


End file.
